Thursday, January 03, 2013

Insufferable Hypocrisy

What could be more absurd than a former imperialist country like Britain insisting that the Falkland Islands remain British, halfway across the world. And refuse consistently to return them to Argentina which claims them as their own Malvinas. Elsewhere, ancient statuary of Greek antiquity, Egyptian sarcophagi, ancient revered manuscripts are returned to their countries of origin out of respect for heritage and justice from European and North American museums.

But Britain stands on its dignity and righteously proclaims that Falklanders are British and wish to remain British and so it will always be. This is most strange. Given that Britain is hugely affronted that Israel has been building on its settlements in its ancient homeland, more latterly named by the West, the "West Bank", where the Palestinian Authority is established, headed by Fatah, the political arm of the PLO.

Israel errs, presumably, in insisting on building Jewish homes in land meant for the Palestinians, Arabs originally from Egypt, Syria and Jordan. West Bank Palestinians are, in effect, Jordanian Arabs; Gazan Palestinians are Egyptian Arabs. The original Palestinians were in actual fact, Jews who had lived in the Holy Land, as it was called, from time immemorial.

Britain took possession of the Malvinas about 180 years ago. The Palestinian Arabs have been located in the Palestinian Territories for a much shorter period of time than that. Yet Britain feels justified in denying Argentina the return of its geography, and Britain feels equally justified in asserting that Israel must withdraw from its ancient territories.

Britain went to war with Argentina over the Falklands/Malvinas, with a huge loss of life, but was triumphant in prevailing over the inferior military of a far less advanced and wealthy country than its own. Now, Britain, along with the European Union, decries Israel's insistence that it is its right to build in East Jerusalem and part of the West Bank which it is prepared to trade with the PA should an agreement ever be forthcoming.

But, according to Britain, that will never happen because Israel has, by its intransigence, destroyed the peace process. Not the PA, which has for two years refused to grace a negotiating boardroom, but Israel which has continually entreated Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to return to the bargaining table that would result in an eventual agreement giving the Palestinians their West Bank State, carving a bit of Israel out to round out its state in trade for a bit of the West Bank to be incorporated into Israel.

As for East Jerusalem, always the capital of Israel from antiquity to the present, after its release from Jordanian rule in the 1967 war, under what justification can Palestinians claim it to be their capital other than the generalized Muslim claim of a geography in its entirety that has been consecrated to Islam and which, under Judaic control now is considered to be an affront to Islam.